1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a apparatus for wireless communication, and more particularly to multiplexing in communication.
2. Description of Prior Art
Development of an overlay network in the Internet by utilizing a technique for virtualizing a wired network has been performed. As an example of such a network, PlanetLab (http://www.planet-lab.org), CoreLab (http://www.corelab.jp), and so forth are available.
Conventionally, in construction of an overlay network in a wired network, Virtual Machine (VM) for realizing a virtual node is operated on a physical node that constitutes the overlay network. In general, a physical node is hardware that provides execution environment for switching and forwarding data packets. A virtual node is a logical instance of such execution environments realized on top of a single physical node. Further, use of a recently widely used virtual technique makes it possible to have two or more VM's to operate on a single physical node.
In such a wired network, a physical communication path to a communication party is ensured by means of hardware such as a network card. Accordingly, it is usually not necessary to make a process corresponding to a so-called data link layer in the OSI reference model, such as ensuring a communication path, control of competition, and so forth, different for every individual communication means (i.e., every network slice) to be overlaid.
Meanwhile, in a wireless network, such as a wireless LAN, there can be caused interference of electromagnetic waves, a hidden terminal problem, and so forth. Therefore, in a wireless network, there may be a case in which ensuring a physical communication path, control of competition, and so forth should be performed differently for every virtual node. Consequently, it is not usually possible to apply technique for a wired network intact to a wireless LAN.